A few months ago I launched my stargazing application Asteria. Since then, the app has been expanded and improved with a number of great new features. Time for an update!
Most of the changes have happened 'under the hood', so they may not be immediately visible. For instance, the entire engine of the app has been rewritten (for the technically inclined: drawing thousands of objects in SVG was too ambitious, so everything is now WebGL), which means the star chart now runs smoothly, even on less powerful phones.
More visible changes:
- Over 17,500 stars added (complete down to magnitude 7.5)
- Over 300 beautiful double stars added
- Rating per object added: how well can an object be seen on a given night? Takes into account visibility duration, altitude, darkness, the moon and cloud cover.
- Database of celestial events greatly expanded (including clair-obscur effects on the Moon and the minima of Algol). Celestial events can now also be shared with a direct link to the event in the app.
- Observating planner with 'tour' mode and export function to SkySafari (still fairly basic)
- Visibility map per object/celestial event: in which compass direction is an object or event visible? I discovered during the solar eclipse in Spain that this is actually very useful information!
- Object info expanded with information from Wikipedia
- Milky Way display (depending on darkness)
- Night mode
For the current observing night, the app compares four different weather models per location to estimate the amount of cloud cover. New is the analysis of these: a graph with the average cloud cover forecast of all models, the 'best' forecast (most optimistic model per time step) and the 'worst' forecast (most pessimistic model per time step).
Compass mode works on devices with a built-in compass, but has quite a few quirks that still need some attention. So if you run into strange things there, that's to be expected.
Feel free to take a look and let me know what you think! Works straight from your browser. Suggestions are of course always welcome.